Posted on 01/27/2017 5:39:31 AM PST by Kaslin
In a conversation about homosexuality a few years ago, a Catholic priest made a powerful observation. "Do you realize Heaven is full of gay saints?" he said. His point: The homosexual condition exists; the exercise is sinful. Those honoring God's law carry an especially heavy cross through life, and for that they are rewarded with paradise.
The atheist cannot separate the sinner from the sin because he doesn't acknowledge the existence of sin. What to do about those who condemn the sin but also demand that the sinner be loved? The atheist hates Christianity, and Christianity-haters have no problem purposely distorting the Church's teachings while slandering its leaders if it will advance their agenda.
Enter HBO and "The Young Pope." In the fourth episode of a ten-episode series, the implausible American pontiff Lenny Belardo, or Pope Pius XIII, proposes to Cardinal Angelo Voiello, a "reformist" prelate who wants to manipulate the eponymous young pope, that all the gay priests be drummed out of the priesthood.
The script reads like a mudslinging advertisement against the Vatican.
The cardinal protests: "It would be a war that would leave the ground littered with corpses, Holy Father. Do you want to know how many corpses would litter the ground?" The pontiff replies, "Two-thirds of the clergy." Since recent gay-activist surveys plot the LGBT segment of the adult population at 3.5 percent, that number is ludicrous. Slander is never having to say you're honest.
But the conversation continues to smear the Catholic hierarchy. The cardinal protests, "Then what becomes of mother church's capacity for forgiveness?" Pope Pius shoots back: "With our abuse of forgiveness, we've become a laughingstock, Your Eminence. As unreliable as some miserable little third-world country." That insult clearly wasn't good enough for the scriptwriter, since the cardinal replies in kind, saying, "With your methods, on the other hand, we are likely to become as reliable as, say, North Korea."
So, take your pick. In HBO's opinion, the world's largest church is either a "miserable little third-world country" or North Korea, which is pretty much the same thing, the latter with a heavy layer of Marxist totalitarianism.
This malignant "Holy Father" doesn't recognize any rules. There's really nothing Catholic about him. In the first episode, when he goes ostensibly to confess his sins to a priest, he demands that the priest tell him the sins of other confessors, which is a confidence, or seal, priests are not supposed to violate. Then, still during confession, he asserts to God: "I do not believe in you. I don't believe you're capable of saving me from myself." When the priest expresses grave concern over this tidbit, he clarifies, "I'm saying I don't believe in God." Then he insists, "I was joking."
Vulture raved that comic book-makers should see this young pope as a model supervillain, as a "sadistically illiberal Batman." Even liberal critics see this pope as a "borderline anti-Christ." He's a powerful threat to everything Christlike in the Church.
The timing for this Vatican drone attack seems a little bizarre, considering how Pope Francis has been persistently pleasing to the left on environmental and economic issues. All this is such an outlandish caricature that HBO might as well just dress Bill Maher in papal vestments and be done with it. It couldn't be any more venomous than this claptrap.
I saw an ad for that on YouTube.
Really disturbed me, and I don’t generally get disturbed by TV show plots.
I dont think I’ll even preview that.
The US ratings are sinking, but it’s big in Italy
http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/young-pope-season-one-ratings/
Jude Law as the priest / Pope and Diane Keaton as a nun? It must be intended as a comedy?
I tried watching it, and made it through about the first five minutes of the first episode and turned it off in disgust.
HBO is so “brave” and “edgy!”
Wow, attacking Catholics! That’s NEVER been done before!
I can’t wait to see their miniseries mocking Mohammed and Moslems.
[[[[[[Crickets]]]]]]
Who watches HBO?
All the cool people, i.e. Hollywood celebs, MSM talking heads, DC Bureaucrats, and most anybody unemployed and living in their mom’s basement.................
I think a good fictional drama about an evil or corrupt Pope could be very good if done right. It could take us into the byzantine world of the Church’s hierarchy and politics. But, of course, the liberals who put The Young Pope together didn’t do that. They played on a bunch of worn out stereotypes of Catholicism. I tried to watch the first episode but it was bizarrely bad.
“In a conversation about homosexuality a few years ago, a Catholic priest made a powerful observation. “Do you realize Heaven is full of gay saints?” he said. His point: The homosexual condition exists; the exercise is sinful. Those honoring God’s law carry an especially heavy cross through life, and for that they are rewarded with paradise.”
I watched the first episode and I agree, the show is horrible. That said, that quote is so much nonsense. No sinner has ever been “rewarded with paradise” for keeping God’s law. He misunderstands the New Testament. He needs to separate the descriptive from the prescriptive.
God’s people will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, seek to keep God’s law because they are new creatures brought from death to life in Christ. They don’t earn paradise because they keep God’s law regarding homosexuality or any other sin. Jesus, by His perfect life and atoning bloody death on the cross, earned paradise for them. Avoidng homosexuality and other sins is a description of their new lives in Christ.
God demands perfection. It’s not possible for a sinner to keep God’s law perfectly. However, Christ Jesus kept it perfectly and His perfection, His righteousness, is imputed to those who trust in Him alone. My sin was imputed to Christ and His perfection has been imputed to me. That’s the great exchange. The most lopsided unfair trade deal in history.
Pretty much everybody when there's a new season of Game of Thrones.
I have never seen that, or The Sopranos, or any of the premium channel junk........................
I forced myself to give the first episode a fair shot and kept up a forlorn hope that it might get better. It doesn’t. It’s little more than a depraved attack on the Catholic church in very thin disguise and done with extremely poor taste. I’ll pass on the rest of the episodes.
I thought it was going to be a modern treatment of the Medici-type popes, but it’s just a mish-mash of insulting dialogue.
It’s actually the more bit-torrented TV show ever.
Paying for HBO is so 1980s.
Good post!
Good post!
Good post!
First, let me say I am not Catholic but I did attend a Catholic school in San Antonio when I was just starting my education in kindergarten. It was a scary place for a little Methodist boy. The nuns were like tyrants.
But I have watched the first four episodes of this series. Just happened upon it flipping around the channels one evening for something interesting and different to watch. I don't know how it will play out in the rest of the series, but the ones I watched were entertaining.
My impression of this "young Pope" in the series, is that he is unlike any Pope the church has ever had. He doesn't do what everyone expects. He doesn't follow precedent but goes against the grain. He shakes things up in the Vatican. He creates his own path through an otherwise staid and never-changing church bureaucracy. He gets rid of longstanding policies and habits of the Vatican. He speaks his mind.
He reminds me of another character playing out in American politics right now, one Donald J. Trump, our new president.
I tried watching it but found it boring. Too slow for me.
HBO needs to go for something big like a Downton Abbey.
People who make broad generalizations without offering any evidence or proof, are usually projecting their own proclivities or habits.
You sound like Hillary saying that half of Trump's supports are deplorables.
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